Commercial leasing transactions are completed today with the support of “off-line” personal relationships among commercial real estate brokerage firms, property owners, and tenants. A commercial real estate broker attempts to identify and match the property space requirements of a potential tenant with the property of the represented property owner. To “broker” a lease, the broker typically completes computer-aided and manual searches of property listings to locate potential matching properties and facilitates lease term negotiations between the owner and the tenant. The scope of a broker's network and her proposal relationships in the commercial real estate field plays a significant role in closing a lease transaction.
To expand the typical broker's network of relationships and to increase the number of potential property representations, at least one company is listing commercial real estate lease opportunities at a Web site accessible by brokers. Although this Web site facilitates the matching of a tenant's property requirements with available properties, the Web site does not support the negotiation closing of a lease transaction in an on-line electronic environment. In other words, brokers, property owners, and potential tenants move to the traditional “off-line” environment to negotiate and close a typical lease transaction initiated by a listing published at this Web site. This results in an inefficient allocation of resources to complete a lease transaction because the present on-line solution fails to take full advantage of the communication efficiency and scope of resources available on the Internet.
Consequently, there is a need in the art for an on-line solution that addresses the primary tasks completed in a typical lease transaction, including the identification of a property matching a potential tenant's requirements, site visit and space calculations, lease term negotiations, and lease execution.